Santo Subito?

Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy
George Weigel
Doubleday, $32.50, 608 pp.

This volume carries on George Weigel’s role as papal biographer (see Witness to Hope), celebrating Pope John Paul II as a heroic figure on multiple fronts. If Weigel had lived in nineteenth-century France, he clearly would have been termed an ultramontane—one who looked beyond the Alps to Rome. Instead, Weigel looks from Washington to Rome.

Weigel begins with a brief review and synopsis of Karol Wojtyła’s pre-papal life and the first two decades of his pontificate, a subject...

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